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The combined smell of mildew, old food and wet dog was about to make me heave undigested pot roast, when our host had finally gotten around to telling us why he invited us to dinner.

“I heard you were something of a comic book aficionado and wanted your opinion on something.”

I eyed my wife and gave her the secret why-the-hell-did-you-accept-this-dinner-invitation-from-these-oddballs look. She countered with the you’re-going-to-walk-home-if-you-give-me-that-look-again look.

Getting up and walking to their den was a matter of avoiding the crotch sniffing dogs and trying to breathe through my mouth to inhale as little as possible the noxious food odor that had built up and was forcing itself out of the kitchen and into the hall way.

The room was filled with piles of books and old magazines. A comic was not in sight. He handed me a pile of a dozen of so that were under a wool sweater on his desk. Looking through them I didn’t find anything much of value, a few comics in poor condition from the fifties.

“I’ve had these things for years. Can’t even tell you where I got them from. You might find a few more in a few of the other piles.”

As I turned around to look, I caught a glimpse of my wife discreetly rolling her eyes. I picked up a few magazines off the top of a stack of Redbooks and National Geographic’s. Halfway through the stack I saw it. Action Comics! Number One! Superman lifting a car! My heart stopped beating. Breathing became forced! The room began to spin! I barely noticed the Labrador sniffing my crotch. “I am going to be rich”, I thought to myself. To our host, “I don’t think you have much of value here. Would you mind if I take these home and cross check them with a catalogue?”

The actual book revolves around a British philosophy professor/soon-to-be-amateur-con man’s attempts to swindle what could be a long lost painting by Brueghel the Elder out of its owner’s hands. There’s a lot of interesting background on the life of Brueghel as our protagonist attempts to prove if the painting is genuine and how it came into the hands of his asshat neighbor. Sadly, the “hero” has difficulty with the machinations of the “con”, zigging when he should have zagged – misreading all of the players, including his own wife.

This is a droll book in the same vein as Julian Barne’s Flaubert’s Parrot.

Read information about the author

Michael Frayn is an English playwright and novelist. He is best known as the author of the farce Noises Off and the dramas Copenhagen and Democracy. His novels, such as Towards the End of the Morning, Headlong and Spies, have also been critical and commercial successes, making him one of the handful of writers in the English language to succeed in both drama and prose fiction. His works often raise philosophical questions in a humorous context. Frayn's wife is Claire Tomalin, the biographer and literary journalist.